Win our remaining games

It's pretty simple, we really need to win all of our remaining fixtures.

Malta at Hampden on Monday night should be straightforward enough - but it's Scotland so probably won't be - but then we face Slovakia at home and Slovenia away.

If we can take nine points from those fixtures there's a pretty good chance of finishing second, but any dropped points would likely be fatal.

England boss Gareth Southgate

A favour from the Auld Enemy

Last night could have been even better for us, but a late own goal gave Slovakia a win over Slovenia in another of the Group F games.

That means they're still four points ahead of us, and Scotland's fate will partly depend on England.

Slovakia visit Wembley on Monday night, so if Gordan Strachan's men can beat Malta and the Three Lions take three points, we'll be just a point behind going into the crunch game at Hampden.

Marek Hamsik and co face Malta in the last game, so if we're not ahead of them going into the final round of fixtures it's curtains.

Tartan Army at Hampden (Image: SNS Group)

Kazakhstan to be rubbish

Ok, here's where it gets complicated.

At the moment, all nine groups contain six teams but when the draw was made Group H and Group I had only five each.

The eight best runners-up go into a play-off, so to make things fair matches against the bottom ranked sides in the group don't count for those in a group with six.

Though Kosovo and Gibraltar were later added in, UEFA decreed that the previous rule still stood, and the second-place ranking won't take games with the bottom side into account. That presents a problem for Scotland.

At the moment Slovakia are ranked second in the table of runners-up, but not everyone has played the same number of games.

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Malta are virtually assured of finishing bottom of Group F, but remember results against the worst side don't count in the second-place ranking.

That means that even if we win all our remaining games, Scotland would only get six points in the runners-up ranking.

As an example, Italy play Spain tonight in Madrid, and have played four games to Scotland's six. In addition, the Azzurri have already played Liechtenstein twice so even if they lose to Spain they can pick up another nine points against Israel, Macedonia and Albania.

Scotland can get a maximum of 14 in terms of the play-off picture, because one of our games is against Malta - so, 20 points minus two wins against the Maltese.

That should still be enough to go through, as long as Kazakhstan don't move off the bottom of Group E.

Montenegro are currently the worst-ranked of the second-placed teams, with seven points from five games once their two wins over Kazakhstan are excluded.